Our friends and colleagues
at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst performed the only exit poll of
the 2014 election for the UMass poll. Below we offer a post from two of their students.
Cameron Roche is a PhD graduate student at the
University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is an Assistant Director of the
UMass Poll and is a research assistant on the NSF Cooperative Congressional
Election Survey (CCES). Jackson Maxwell is an undergraduate research assistant
for UMass Poll. He is a political
science and history dual major at the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst.

The 2014 Massachusetts gubernatorial race between Charlie
Baker and Martha Coakley ended with a photo finish. Earlier this year, it
looked to be an easy victory for Coakley, but it quickly turned into a far
closer race.

Coakley and Baker consistently traded leads in polls
throughout much of September and October, often polling within the margin of
error of each other. Then, on October 24th, a Boston Globe poll
showed Baker with a shocking 9-point lead.[1] On
Election Night, Baker prevailed by the ever-so-slim margin of 40,361 votes, out
of the over 2.1 million that were cast.[2]
With such a small margin of victory, one inevitably looks towards the
demographics from which those key votes came from.

Baker, a moderate Republican who lost to incumbent governor
Deval Patrick in the 2010 gubernatorial election, focused much of his campaign
on fiscal issues, where he had a distinct edge over Coakley. UMass Poll found
that 43% of voters trusted Baker more with economy, as opposed to Coakley’s 36%
tally. Baker also toned down the attacks on President Obama that turned off
voters from his 2010 campaign, and successfully molded himself into a more
personable candidate. This was another Achilles heel for Coakley, who struggled
to connect with voters during her unsuccessful 2010 campaign for the Senate
seat vacated by the late Ted Kennedy.

Although Coakley distinguished herself from more progressive
candidates like Steve Grossman in the Democratic primary, she was still seen by
the electorate as being farther to the left than Baker was to the right, a
phenomenon illustrated in Figure 1. UMass Poll found that 22% of voters viewed
Coakley as "very liberal,” while only 4% saw Baker as “very conservative.”

Although a Republican tidal wave seemed to sweep the nation,
there were more specific reasons why Charlie Baker was able to win the
governor’s race in a state that President Obama won by 23 points in 2012. UMass
Poll data revealed that the gender gap, and the support of independent and
moderate voters were the key factors in Baker’s slim victory.

In a state with over 2.2 million voters who are registered
as “unaffiliated,” and over three times as many registered Democrats as there
are Republicans, Baker needed the help of both moderate and independent voters
to win. UMass Poll data revealed that Baker won the vote of those who
identified as “moderate” by 24% , taking 60% of the vote to Coakley’s 36%.
Independents, so key in any election, also backed Baker definitively. Exit poll
data revealed that Baker won the vote of those who identified as “independent”
by 32%, taking 63% of the vote to Coakley’s 31%. Although Baker also won the
majority of the independent vote in the 2010 election, the 32% margin of
victory he achieved in 2014 more than doubled his 2010 margin.

Women played another key role in Baker’s victory. In his 2010 loss to Deval Patrick, Baker lost
the female vote by 25 points.[3]
And although Coakley did manage to win a majority of the female vote, it was
not as large as the 2010 margin, nor was it enough to offset Baker’s major
advantage in the male vote. As Baker was
ahead among men by 17%, Coakley needed, and was hoping for, a huge advantage in
votes from women, but only beat Baker by 11%; taking 53% of women compared to
Baker's 42%.

Coakley needed the full support of both women and
independents to pull out a victory on election night. While she managed to gain
a small majority of female voters, her tally fell short of the gap Deval
Patrick achieved in 2010. Baker also ran the table with independent voters,
more than doubling up on Coakley’s total. With those two demographics in hand,
Baker was able to procure just the amount of votes he needed to avenge his 2010
loss.